"Labor's Monkey Wrench": Newsweekly Coverage of the 1962-63 New York
Newspaper Strike

James F. Tracy (Florida Atlantic University)

Abstract: This article provides a frame and textual analysis
of coverage appearing in Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World
Report of the 114-day 1962-63 strike of the International Typographical Union Local 6 against
New York City newspapers. The strike was particularly important for asserting the union's
collective bargaining rights and establishing its stance on automated printing processes. Analysis
of the newsweeklies' treatment of the strike suggests how these outlets related the event in terms
favourable to the newspaper publishers, while misrepresenting or disparaging the union's position
in and justification for the strike.

Introduction

In the late 1950s a struggle was well underway across North America between newspaper publishers
and newsworkers over union jurisdiction and job security vis-à-vis the move toward installation of
teletypesetting and like forms of automation. Between 1951 and 1961 there were 187 strikes
affecting 288 newspapers in the United States alone ("What's Happening to Newspapers," 1963). This
article examines one such standoff, between the International Typographical Union (ITU) Local 6 and
New York newspapers occurring in 1962 and 1963. This strike's timing and scope made it especially
decisive, for both the ITU and New York's newspaper publishers realized how the guidelines for its
resolution would influence the parameters of contract negotiations at newspapers throughout North
America (Raskin, 1963).

News coverage of strikes has been examined from critical perspectives since the 1970s. The
Glasgow University Media Group (1976, 1980) has provided detailed analyses of how news media in the
United Kingdom have presented workplace struggles. Goldman & Rajagopal (1991), Parenti (1986),
and Puette (1992) have broadened critical approaches to news coverage of labour and industrial
conflict, while more recent studies by Kumar (2001) and Martin (2004) have examined mainstream
press coverage of U.S. strikes in the 1990s. An emerging set of studies has addressed the shifting
organizational structures of newsworkers (McKercher, 2002) and the history and press coverage of
strikes by the American Newspaper Guild ("the Guild") in the 1960s (Brennen, 2005; Tracy, 2004).
This article uses a method informed by news-framing research (Entman, 1993; Iyengar, 1991; Reese,
2001; Tuchman, 1978) to consider how a strike waged by blue-collar newsworkers was presented in
three national news periodicals: Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World
Report (U.S. News). To more fully acknowledge the coverage of the strike, it is
necessary to first provide a context for the event by looking at the ITU's concerns and the
motivations and interests of New York's newspaper publishers.

Factors behind the 1962-63 strike and lockout

In the two decades following World War II, the ITU was one of the most successful unions in
North America, with members working less than 40 hours per week, earning over $5,000 annually and
having the security of company-sponsored pensions (Lipset, Trow, & Coleman, 1956). According to
Lipset, Trow, & Coleman's comprehensive study of the ITU's internal politics, most all of its
members "share[d] a roughly common income and status" (1956, p. 142, italics in original)
and regarded themselves as "a community of equals" (1956, p. 143). The union struck only
reluctantly to preserve or recapture past gains, and it was successful throughout the 1950s in
maintaining a "closed shop," despite the illegality of this under the Taft-Hartley Act
(Lipset, Trow, & Coleman 1956). The ITU's largest local, Local 6 (known as "Big Six") was
organized by New York Tribune publisher Horace Greeley in 1852 (Lipset, Trow, &
Coleman, 1956).

Local 6 was all but forced into a strike to secure three demands it had been denied for several
years: 1) The right of the union to bargain for its own contract rather than accepting a pre-set
"pattern," 2) compensation for the automation of some work and guarantees against layoffs, and 3) a
reduction of the work week to 35 hours. The contract for the New York Newspaper Guild, the union
representing journalists and clerical workers, expired on October 31, 1962, while all other union
contracts came up for renewal on December 7, the latter date set after resolution of a strike led
by the photoengravers in December 1953 ("N.Y. Settlement Is Near," 1963). Thereafter the other
unions typically ratified the same wage and benefits package extended to the Guild (Raskin, 1963).
The ITU explained how the publishers had delayed negotiations, for several months during contract
renewal talks with Local 6 in 1957, 1959, and 1961, "turn[ing] a deaf ear when our negotiators
discussed the special problems and working conditions of union printers. Instead, they would hand
us a contract based on their negotiations with the Newspaper Guild for editorial and clerical
workers, and they would say, in effect, "'that's what we're giving you; take it or leave it.'"
("Why New York Printers," 1963, p. 2)

This bargaining pattern was traceable to the formation of the Publishers Association, a
coalition created to challenge the alliance of unions by shutting down operations and locking out
workers. The publishers preferred to deal with the Guild rather than the ITU, which they regarded
as much more formidable (Powers, 2005). Following the settlement of a 73-day Guild strike at the
World-Telegram and Sun in 1950, from which considerable gains were made in wages and job
security ("World-Telegram Strike Ends," 1950), the 14 unions representing New York City newsworkers
requested the same package from other papers and struck repeatedly until their demands were met
(Sleigh, 1998). In addition, the chapel system empowered unions to designate which members would
work, and which outlets they would work for, thus increasing the ability for striking workers to
find work elsewhere when papers did not collectively shut down. This made strikes potentially
unrelenting (Sleigh, 1998). Still, when the bargaining pattern with the Guild was established, the
Publishers Association was tested only once, in 1958, during a deliverers' union strike. When Big
Six recognized the deliverers' picket line, the seven member papers shut down for 19 days.

Local 6 began to negotiate with the Publishers Association in July 1962, almost six months
before the December 7 deadline. Rejecting the Guild's overall $8.50 package, Local 6 asked for a
$10 weekly salary increase for the first year, $8.45 for the second, a 35-hour work week (down from
36.5) and paid sick leave ("Effects of the New York Newspaper Strike," 1962). When the publishers
continued to stall this time, union members voted 2007 to 47 on December 2, 1962, to authorize a
strike if there was no agreement by December 7. Believing the ITU was bluffing, the publishers held
firm, and the union walked out at 2:00 a.m. on December 8 ("Why New York Printers," 1963).

Because the union did not want to be accused of causing a news blackout, it only struck four of
the Publishers Association's then-nine member papers - TheNew York Times, the
Daily News, the World-Telegram and Sun, and the Journal American -
noting that these papers had the financial wherewithal to endure a long standoff. Hours after
workers walked off the job, the New York Herald Tribune, TheMirror, the
New York Post, and the Long IslandStar Journal shut down, and the
Long Island Press cut back its circulation (Kelber & Schelsinger, 1967), initiating a
standoff with nearly 20,000 unionized workers.

While Local 6's judgment and the publishers' lockout were common knowledge within journalistic
circles, they were seldom discussed in the coverage examined below, thus contributing to the
impression that the union alone was to blame for the news blackout. According to the ITU,

The four newspapers that voluntarily closed their doors could have supplied New Yorkers with
all the required news coverage and advertisements, but they chose to aggravate the crisis -
presumably at the risk of having to shut down permanently to whip up public opinion against the
union and to show their allegiance to the tight fisted politics of the Publishers Association.
("Why New York Printers Had to Call," 1963, p. 2)

Automation was also a concern of the union, albeit a lesser one, alongside the publishers'
refusal to bargain. Typographers perceived automation as a threat to job security, and with good
reason. "Many crafts," the Canadian Royal Commission on Newspapers observed with hindsight in 1981,
"have already all but disappeared, such as those of the typographers, proofreaders,
photo-engravers, and stereotypers," (Canada, 1981, p. 188), because of automation, computerization,
and attendant de-skilling in the Canadian newspaper industry. "These former craftsmen," like their
U.S. counterparts, "are still employed to do the new jobs, but they remain fearful of losing even
these jobs to other new machines, or less-skilled employees, because the new machines call for
fewer skills." (Canada, 1981, p. 188). Conscious of these developments, Local 6 sought restrictions
on the publishers' introduction of teletype equipment, yet their concerns were often misrepresented
in the press. For example, the Times' A. H. Raskin reported that the ITU was "fearful that
a change would be a first step toward the use of computers to displace Linotype operators" (1963,
p. 22). According to Raskin, the union therefore sought the establishment of a workers' fund
supported by savings from limited automation and computerization. Yet Raskin's assessment
overlooked steps the union had taken to accommodate automation. According to ITU president
Elmer Brown, the ITU's alleged fear of automation contrasted with how the union "trained, directly
and indirectly, thousands of [its] members in new processes, in photocomposition, in electronics,
and in virtually every phase of 'automation'" (Brown, 1963b, p. 44-45).

Having provided a background of the history and specific causes of the strike, we turn to an
overview of the sample and rationale for the selection of Time, Newsweek, and
U.S. News, as well as an explanation of these magazines' role in the information economy
of New York and North America.

Rationale for selection of newsweeklies

The selected newsweeklies are ideal for considering how the strike was covered by mainstream
media, especially since recordings of broadcast reports from this time are largely unavailable as
archival sources. In addition, although New Yorkers initially turned to a variety of media as
alternatives to newspapers, including out-of-town and foreign-language papers publishing English
print editions ("Effects of the New York Newspaper Strike," 1962), newsmagazines likewise became
sought-after information sources.

From December 1962 until May 1963, 37 articles focused on the strike - 16 in Time, 14
in Newsweek, and 7 in U.S. News. Each periodical also had a special department
lending considerable attention to the strike; Time's and Newsweek's divisions
were titled "The Press" and US News', "Labor Week." Time and Newsweek
published weekly in New York, with national circulations in 1962 of 2,654,550 and 1,529,440
respectively (McCallister, 1962). Time alone had 300,000 subscribers to its regional New
York edition and, throughout the strike, sold as many as 50,000 more copies per week at New York
newsstands ("Effects of," 1962). The national circulation of U.S. News, published in
Washington, DC, was 1,242,510 (McCallister, 1962). "The weekly news magazines did the most to
increase their opportunities in the New York market," according to a study conducted by graduate
students and faculty at Columbia University's School of Journalism. "Channeling all extra copies to
metropolitan newsstands, these magazines sought to capture . . . those who usually read a newspaper
while on the subway, bus or train" ("Effects of," 1962, p. 20).

While the newsmagazines were prominent in New York during the strike, the representation of the
event in these outlets also suggests how national coverage played out in U.S. dailies and
electronic media. As Herbert Gans observes, because newsweeklies "come out after all the headlines
are known, they review the major events of the week, summarizing and integrating the daily
newspaper and television reports into a single whole, and speculating, when possible, about the
future" (1979, p. 4). In this way, such outlets contribute their own interpretation, which may
expand on or even diverge from daily reports, making an effort to include "details that their daily
peers may have ignored or failed to notice, notably biographical details about people who make
headlines, and data or speculation about their motives, when they are available" (Gans, 1979, p.
4). Through their weekly surveys, newsmagazines bring descriptive and interpretive frameworks to
issues and events. With this in mind, we now turn to conceptualizing how this strike was presented
in these venues.

Framing a newspaper strike

Research on framing explains how journalistic outlets "frame" social agents and phenomena
through news coverage into distinct incidents that the journalists call "stories." Tuchman explains
how the news media arrange otherwise random social occurrences within "frames" that "turn
non-recognizable happenings or amorphous talk into a discernible event" (1978, p. 192). The frame
accordingly "imparts a character to that occurrence" (p. 193). According to Entman, "[t]o frame is
to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating
text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem, definition, moral evaluation, and/or
treatment recommendation for the item described" (1993, p. 52, italics in original). As a
concept, framing is an especially apt approach for analyzing mainstream media's treatment of
labour, since even though "[s]trikes are the end product of 1 percent of the collective bargaining
that unions do," they "account for more than 90 percent of the news coverage of unions" (Kalaski,
1992, p. 4).

Iyengar explains how by centring on who or what is liable for a problem, journalists assign
"causal responsibility" and "treatment responsibility," each of which "seeks to establish who has
the power (and interest) to alleviate or perpetuate" a given problem (1991, p. 8). These subtle
mechanics of the frame tend to hold one individual or a sole institution accountable for a problem
and look to another for restoration of the status quo. This dynamic of framing - of "personalizing"
and "dramatizing" figures, events, and issues by concentrating on the trials and tribulations of
specific "heroes," "victims," and "wrongdoers" (Bennett, 2005, p. 40) - produces what Lance Bennett
terms "a 'can't-see-the-forest-for-the-trees' information bias that makes it difficult to see the
big (institutional) picture that lies beyond the many actors crowding center stage who are caught
in the eye of the news camera" (2005, p. 40).

By framing how events unfold and how social phenomena are perceived, newsweekly coverage
cumulatively shapes public sentiment toward social actors and institutions by cognitively
and culturally organizing phenomena, imbuing them with meaning over the short and long
term. According to Reese, while cognitive frames organize and make temporal activity coherent,
"more 'cultural' frames don't stop with organizing one story, but invite us to marshal a cultural
understanding and keep on doing so beyond the immediate information" (2001, p. 13.). Cultural
frames culminate in the formation of mythical, or "commonsensical," understandings of social
reality that together constitute the ideational legitimation of institutional processes and
practices.

In almost every instance, framing also involves a subtle inducement to view an event from the
perspective of certain social power interests, thus complicating the notion of "objectivity."
"Undoubtedly an 'objective' news report would quote 'both' sides," Hackett and Zhao note, "yet
through the juxtaposition of stories and in other ways, news accounts can actively work to
privilege some interpretations and exclude or marginalize alternative ways of interpreting or
contextualizing the seemingly same event" (1998, p. 119). For example, throughout their coverage of
the strike, Time and Newsweek carried an almost equal number of quotes from
publishers and union leaders or their representatives (16 to 20 and 20 to 23, respectively), in
addition to government officials (8 and 7), implying the magazines' neutral treatment of each side.
(U.S. News' coverage, in contrast, is especially skewed in this regard, with 11 quotes
from publishers and only 1 from a union representative.) However, closer textual analysis of how
the references are positioned within the frame suggests that Local 6 president Bertram Powers'
statements are used within a broader frame that calls his motivations into question, often
depicting the standoff as "Powers' strike." While accounts of Powers are not uniformly negative,
his centrality in the frame and the attentiveness to his qualities and activities apart from the
dynamics of union solidarity and action reinforce a deeper cultural notion that organized labour is
malevolent, self-serving, and dishonest. This dichotomous treatment of social phenomena reinforces
an impression of accord between the news media and their readerships, as Goldman & Rajagopal
observe, "by defining the latter against what has been isolated as deviant. Shared norms and values
are stressed; opposing interests remain unelaborated" (1991, p. 160).

This impression was reinforced through a second thematic frame, the "victimized public." For the
first four weeks of the strike, this frame was especially prevalent, characterized by the alleged
effects of the strike on the public qua inconvenienced bystanders. The frame had a variant early on
and as the strike concluded, wherein the public was more abstractly rendered as the economy or the
beset financial means of the newspapers. Taken together, the frames implicate Powers as not only
the cause of the public's ill treatment, but moreover as an object serving to distinguish the
concerns and interests of labour (conniving, unlawful, pecuniary) from those of the publishers and
public/economy (upright, law-abiding, victimized). The following provides a more detailed analysis
of how this framing process played out, through a close textual analysis of the discursive elements
composing each frame.

Frame one: Powers' strike

Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News personalized their coverage by focusing
especially on Powers' specific statements and activities. Big Six's counterparts, the New York
newspaper publishers, were much more vaguely represented by the Publishers Association or their
sole bargaining representative, New York Times vice president Amory Bradford. "On one side
of the argument," Time reported, "stood Bertram A. Powers, 40, president of New York Big
Six of the International Typographical Union," who, "without even bothering to notify the other six
printing craft unions . . . pulled his men off the morning Times and the News, the evening
World-Telegram and the Journal-American - the four Manhattan dailies that he deemed
sufficiently prosperous to endure a lengthy siege" ("Deadlock," 1962, p. 41, emphases added). On
the other side stood the Publishers Association, established "for the express purpose of presenting
labor with a united front" ("Deadlock," 1962, p. 41).

Powers came to symbolize labour's irrational, if not criminal, stance. Newsweek
referred to Powers as "the slim, stubborn president of the New York Typographical Union" ("Rolling
Again," 1963, p. 64), while Time quotes New York Times columnist Scotty Reston:
"'Striking the Times is like striking an old lady'" ("Striking an Old Lady," 1963, p. 28). The
papers' and public's misfortunes were repeatedly linked to Powers' alleged drive as union
administrator. Indeed, the main cause of the shutdown and potential demise of several papers "was
not so much the customary haggle over pay scales as Bert Powers' ambition to lead the I.T.U. back
to organized glory" ("Deadlock," 1962, p. 41). "To Journal American publisher Joseph
Kingsbury-Smith," Newsweek reports, "Powers is an opportunist trying 'to build up his
reputation as a tough union leader'" ("Powers Play," 1963, p. 54) so that he might ascend to the
ITU's chief administrative spot. "Strike leader" Powers is "regarded as a tough bargainer" and "a
militant unionist," U.S. News similarly notes. "[A] victory in this strike could help him,
just as a defeat could hurt. Mr. Powers is up for re-election as the local's president next May"
("Strike Leader Powers," 1962, p. 11).

Such assertions were speculative at best, as was the acceptance at face value of the newspapers'
pleas of poverty. In fact, of all the New York papers, only the Times routinely disclosed
its financial records ("Newspaper Strike Changed Many Habits," 1963). Powers anticipated the
anthropomorphizing of the newspapers as "potential fatalities" when he told the Times that
if any paper went under, "it would be a matter of suicide, not murder" (quoted in "Newspaper Strike
Negotiations Set to Resume," 1962, p. 4), an observation confirmed by the publishers' lockout. Even
so, Time related the papers' financial dealings in medical or funerary metaphors. "[I]f
sustained," the strike could "kill off as many as three Manhattan dailies," including publisher
Dorothy Schiff's Post, "a liberal afternoon tabloid with a tenuous lease on life" after
having been given "periodic and generous transfusions from Dolly Schiff's personal fortune."
"Another potential fatality," the report continues, "is Hearst's tabloid morning Mirror, which . .
. is famishing for want of advertising income" ("The Bitter and the Bright," 1963, p. 87). "The
prospect of such fatalities," according to Time, "weighs lightly on the conscience of Bert
Powers" ("Deadlock," 1962, p. 41). Bolstering Powers' demagogic semblance, Newsweek points
to union members' limited strike benefits vis-à-vis Powers' "$15,000 a year" salary, further noting
how the workers' hollow reproduction of "Powers' argument" concerning the publishers'
non-co-operation "did not stand up to rigid inspection." "In strike pay lines," the article notes,
"unionists grumblingly echoed Powers' charges that the New York publishers, with the heavy holiday
ad season behind them, really didn't care whether the strike was settled soon" ("Powers Play,"
1963, p. 54).

Again, Powers is not always depicted negatively, yet the sheer focus on him personalizes the
coverage, while eclipsing any consideration of the union's collective action, motivations, or
objectives. As Local 6's strike paper observed, a story in Time "says that the strike is
due to 'Boss Powers'' advice. Not a word about the secret referendum in which we voted 2003 to 47
to authorize the strike, not a line to explain our side of the story, although the facts have been
made available to Time reporters" ("Beware of Rumors," 1962, n.p.). According to Newsweek,
"Tall, gray-blonde Bert Powers is Publishers' enemy No. 1 in New York's longest newspaper blackout
ever" ("Powers Play," 1963, p. 54). A brief teaser prefacing a two-page report in U.S.
News ("How a Big City," 1962) concentrates on "Strike Leader Powers," with the subtitle, "His
motives under fire," pointing to Powers' purportedly ulterior motives: that "[h]e refuses to accept
the $8.50 raise, won in November by the Newspaper Guild as a pattern," along with "seek[ing] to
insure his prestige and future both within the ITU and among New York City labor spokesmen"
("Strike Leader Powers," 1962, p. 11). "One angry newspaper executive," says Powers "is 'power
mad.'" As U.S. News similarly observes, Powers is "a tough bargainer" and "a militant
unionist" ("Strike Leader Powers," 1962, p. 11). A neck-up shot of Powers, with his eyes averted to
the upper right in Dragnet denouement style, reinforces his blameworthiness. Echoing the
publishers' line, U.S. News columnist David Lawrence obliquely referred to Powers as "a
dictator" determined "to hold out until some of the employers are tottering on the edge of
bankruptcy" (1963, p. 96).

While Powers was repeatedly scrutinized, the publishers' rationale for the shutdown was seldom
addressed, although it was likely intended to foster public condemnation of the strike, a
strike-breaking technique routinely employed from the 1920s by government and business alike
(Ginsberg, 1986). The publishers "chose to lock out our members," ITU president Elmer Brown
remarked, "and thus attempt to stir up public resentment against the ITU and its New York locals"
(1963b, p. 76). By not highlighting the publishers' lockout, the newsweeklies reinforced Powers'
culpability for the standoff. Time pointed to how Powers and Local 6, "by striking four
Manhattan dailies last December incited into silence all seven of the city's papers and two on Long
Island" ("No Motion," 1963, p. 50). U.S. News noted, "The strike has idled 18,000 workers
on nine papers and is costing publishers and their employes [sic] an estimated 4 million
dollars a day" ("Score on Strikes at Newspapers," 1963, p. 96). "The plight of the New York
printers," Newsweek columnist Henry Hazlitt opined, "hardly seemed desperate enough to
justify their action in calling a strike at the height of the Christmas season, throwing 20,000
people directly out of work, injuring thousands of small newspaper stands and stationary stores,
and depriving 5 million people of their daily papers" (1962, p. 60). "'We've been sacrificed to a
power play by the ITU,'" one sportswriter remarked in a Newsweek piece on furloughed
journalists migrating to broadcast outlets for temporary work ("Job Hunters," 1963, p. 85). So
persistent was this theme that the ITU later "doubt[ed] that more than 20 per cent of the people in
New York City ever found out that the strike was not against all of the newspapers" ("New York
Members," 1963, p. 123).

Even when the publishers' interests are represented alongside Powers, the personalization
dynamic tends to place the former in a vastly more positive light. For example, Time
reduced the newspaper shutdown to "Two Men" (1963, p. 42): Powers and New York Times vice
president and publishers' bargainer Amory Bradford. Photos of Bradford and Powers accompany the
story. The first, captioned "Publishers' Bradford," declared beneath, "Meeting in a common cause";
it is a close-up of a bespectacled and seemingly erudite Bradford, looking to his left with
eyebrows raised, apparently in mid-sentence. The second, a body-length shot of Powers on the picket
line, is captioned, "Printers' Powers Picketing," concluding, "But with nothing to say." The
imagery suggests two forms of diplomacy - one tactful and the other brash and irrational.
Time's accompanying story of the two men is likewise disparate. Powers, who upon assuming
the leadership of Big Six "issued the command that struck nine dailies dumb," is introduced as "a
shrewd and self-made man whose formal education ended with the second year of high school."
Bradford, on the other hand, a "product of the Ivy League," had "traveled a vastly different course
to his collision with the union leader." After practising corporate law, he moved swiftly up the
managerial ladder at the Times to become the publishers' "logical choice to confront the
printers' truculence." Echoing the message in the accompanying photos of Bradford and Powers, the
article pins ultimate blame on the latter, who "could have kept his men working at their jobs while
he bargained with men whom only his own blindness prevents him from recognizing as reasonable"
("Two Men," 1963, p. 42). Yet Powers recalls how Bradford was especially hostile toward the press.
Bradford was, according to Powers' account, "very difficult" to get along with. "He was a nice guy.
He just wasn't suited for that role. Very high-handed. He once knocked over a couple of TV guys who
were trying to question him and he wanted to get through. . . .But he didn't endear himself to the
press. He didn't care, either" (Powers, 2005).

In this and similar ways, the publishers' side could just as easily have been depicted as
headstrong and self-serving. An illustrative example involves the alleged value of the package
asked for by the ITU. At the strike's conclusion, Time drew on the statements of Bradford
to note how Powers "went into the strike demanding a $37-a-week [sic] package increase,"
but only received "$12.50" ("Costly Settlement," 1963, p. 67). Yet the first figure (actually $38)
was arrived at through the publishers' estimate of the largest potential cost of the wage
and benefits package Powers unofficially asked for, a figure repeated relentlessly throughout the
strike. TheNew York Times later admitted how the alleged figure for a strike
settlement was inflated to make the union's demands seem excessive. Writing in the Times,
A. H. Raskin noted,

Long after [Powers] had cut his off-the-record figure in half, the publishers kept pointing to
his formal call for a $38 package. At one stage the union chief admonished [Bradford], "You've
got people so convinced I want $38 that if I get $34 my members will say, 'Where's the other
$4?'" (Raskin, 1963, p. 22)

The newsweeklies' foremost profile of the strike appeared as a Time cover story - a
story that in almost every way epitomized the attribution of cause to Powers. A menacing
illustration of Powers, captioned "Strike leader Bert Powers," appears on the magazine's cover,
alongside a monkey wrench wedged between two spools of paper. In the upper right-hand corner,
Time asks, "Is labor's only weapon a monkey wrench?" Nonetheless, statements or behaviour
that might have confirmed Powers' criminal persona were difficult to come by, and his biographical
information was equally pedestrian. "The most inflammatory evidence that could be summoned to
discredit him," Kelber & Schlesinger note, "was his admitted admiration of John L. Lewis,"
United Mine Workers president and leader of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (1967, p.
119). The five-page story nevertheless depicts Powers as the labour movement's enfant
terrible, and he serves as a departure point for a broader denunciation of the entire U.S.
labour movement.

While Powers identified his position consistently through the first person plural - "we" and
"our" - Time implied that the union leader was far more self-serving. Powers was "a
glacially handsome man [who] spoke coldly about his situation." "All Powers wanted," the
magazine argues, "was his own kind of contract" ("Hard Times," 1963, p. 13, emphases
added). Yet Powers said nothing from which such a conclusion might be drawn. In fact, his
perceptive appraisal of strike coverage is quoted but otherwise unconsidered. "'All this pressure
and complaint was expected. Management is right and we're always wrong. That's the way strikes are
[depicted]. I'm not bothered" ("Hard Times," 1963, p. 13). Time tightened the focus on
Powers in the initial paragraphs by highlighting an exchange between him and President Kennedy. At
a press conference, Kennedy had referenced Powers "by name, declar[ing] that the Powers-led New
York newspaper strike, now eleven weeks old, had 'long since passed the point of public
toleration.'" Powers, however, "remained unbothered. 'President Kennedy,' he said with tight-lipped
calm, 'has been ill-advised'" ("Hard Times," 1963, p. 13).

Shortly thereafter, in the same article, Time pointed to the ineffectiveness of Powers'
determination. It noted Powers' contention, "'We should concern ourselves with negotiations,'" but
the magazine counters, "Yet it is precisely in the field of negotiations that Powers has failed.
And in his failure he has helped bring about a disgraceful strike" ("Hard Times," 1963, p. 14).
Again, with no mention of the publishers' recalcitrance, Powers' fault is emphasized. "From the
beginning," the report argues, "the publishers made clear their suspicion that Powers was not
bargaining in good faith, that he was really wielding his strike monkey wrench to enhance his power
in the I.T.U. and catapult himself into the union's international presidency" ("Hard Times," 1963,
pp. 14-15). Time then turns to describing an extravagant Miami Beach conference attended
by elder U.S. labour leaders who had "won badges of labor honor in the form of busted heads and
bloodied noses during the days of labor's surge to power" ("Hard Times," 1963, p. 14).

The article's images similarly relate the strike through the lens of violence and union
"muscle," a term used by Powers on one occasion yet echoed repeatedly throughout the piece. The
conflict is again reduced to two parties, with accompanying photos of Powers and Bradford. Powers'
photo, captioned "Typographers' Powers/One talks muscle," is taken from a slightly lower angle,
showing him in mid-sentence with forefinger imperiously cutting the air. Bradford's photo, however
- "Publishers' Bradford/The other talks suspicion" - presents Bradford with head in hand and
eyebrows slightly raised, as if in a state of combined fatigue and puzzlement ("Hard Times," 1963,
p. 14). A photo on the following page, captioned "Detroit's 1941 Ford Strike: A vast and vital
place, bloodily won," depicts autoworkers fiercely attacking a would-be replacement worker. The
photo's placement in the story, alongside a bulleted list of the ITU's positions - "CONTRACT
EXPIRATION," "WAGES AND BENEFITS," "JOB SECURITY" ("Hard Times," 1963, p. 15) - contributes to the
cultural frame of labour's deviousness, while calling into question the legitimacy of the union's
demands.

The second news-coverage frame, that of the strike's alleged effects on the public, acts
symbiotically with the personalization dynamic of the first frame, which looks to Powers as the
sole cause of the strike. We now turn to a closer analysis of the second frame.

Frame two: The victimized public

For the first five weeks of the strike and lockout, the public was cast as the principal victim
of "Power's strike," with U.S. News a main outlet employing this frame. Early on, the
magazine included twin profiles of newspaper strikes in New York and Cleveland, where Cleveland's
Plain Dealer and Press and News were in a standoff with the Guild ("What
Newspaper Strikes Did to Two Cities," 1962). The story highlighted the remarks of four New York
publishers and a member of New York's Board of Trade; no union officials or workers were quoted. It
further tied the fate of the papers to the strike, announcing in the bold-faced lead, "For New
York, there was the added prospect that some papers might not survive" ("What Newspaper Strikes,"
1962, p. 58).

While U.S. News elaborated on how the Post and the Herald Tribune
were "apparently least able to survive a prolonged strike" ("What Newspaper Strikes," 1962, p. 58),
it failed to explain how both papers had voluntarily shut down and locked out their workers. Thus,
through exclusion, the article links the fate of the two papers to Local 6's initial walkout. By
seldom distinguishing between strike and shutdown, the article placed sole responsibility for the
blackout with the union. When U.S. News did distinguish between the two - once in the text
and at another point in a boxed breakdown of the strikes, titled "Unions' Demands, Papers' Offers"
- it further implicated labour as principally culpable for the Post and Herald
Tribune's potential demise by focusing on the publishers' solidarity instead of the workers'.
While the "[m]embers of other unions" endorsed Big Six's walkout at the first four papers by
"refus[ing] to cross the picket lines," in the next sentence, following the subhead "Strike against
all," the magazine highlighted the publishers' camaraderie: "The five other papers promptly closed,
saying a strike against one was a strike against all" ("What Newspaper Strikes," 1962, p. 58).

Four photographs accompanying the story emphasize the public's plight at the hands of striking
workers while driving home the notion that the papers' shutdown was solely caused by the ITU. The
first photo, of unidentified picketers parading outside the Times building, is captioned
"PICKETS [sic] in the printers' strike that closed down nine major dailies." A second
picture, directly below, depicts several anonymous members "of the city's news-starved millions"
encircling a newsstand "to obtain out-of-town papers." A third photo shows the makeshift
advertising in a department-store window as pedestrians pass. The final photo shows "SUBWAY RIDERS"
who, "mostly without newspapers to read, stare unhappily into space" ("What Newspaper Strikes,"
1962, p. 59). In the context of downplaying the publishers' shutdown, the four images together
strongly associate labour with the public's travails.

Newsweek similarly used a food shortage metaphor in describing the strike and lockout.
"The sad truth," Newsweek observed, "was that in New York, which accounts for one tenth
the circulation of all U.S. newspapers, the news famine was a depressing factor in the lives and
fortunes of nearly all of its 8 million people" ("The News Gap," 1962, p. 46). A photo depicting a
model in a department store window "who jotted specials down on a blackboard" was captioned,
"Newspaper ads were never like this" ("The News Gap," 1962, p. 46). Indeed, Newsweek went
to bizarre lengths to invoke an impression of misery and alienation.

The effect of the news blackout was obvious everywhere. A woman on a subway train, staring
into the faces of fellow riders who did not have their usual newspapers to hide behind, said one
day last week, "I never realized before how many ugly people there are in this town." ("The News
Gap," 1962, p. 46)

While emphasis on the public's misfortunes was a key theme of the newspaper publishers'
pronouncements and was reflected in many of the newsweekly stories, public sentiment was dismissed
by U.S. labor secretary Willard Wirtz four weeks into the strike. On January 6, Wirtz created a
Board of Public Accountability, consisting of three judges who acted as third-party negotiators to
assess the strike's impact. The publishers welcomed the board's creation, as did seven of the
newspaper unions, but the ITU and two of the other unions refused to take part, fearing a proposal
that would favour the publishers. The Times reported Wirtz's conclusion "that public
opinion, 'because it is unorganized,' is a small force at the time of the crisis" and "at present
is expressed only at the point of interruption of services during the strike" ("Wirtz Finds Public
Impotent in Strikes," 1963, p. 1).

The highlighting of these specific remarks was revealing given the board's other insights in its
final account, most of which were omitted or selectively reported on by the business press and
similar outlets. Writing in his New Yorker column, press critic A. J. Liebling
observed,

I found the report of the three-judge Board of Public Accountability astonishingly
informative. I say "astonishingly" because I had first read of their findings in news stories
published by the Standard, the Wall Street Journal, the Brooklyn Eagle, and the Journal of
Commerce. All of these papers excerpted from the much fuller excerpts sent out by the Associated
Press and United Press International, and all of them deformed the content. (Liebling, 1963, p.
115)

Following this event, stories specifically emphasizing a dangerously inconvenienced public were
almost non-existent. This frame nevertheless persisted by conflating and anthropomorphizing the
economy and the public to the point where they essentially appeared as one "victim." Time
referred to the "many wounds" created by the strike: "Nearly 20,000 men are out of work; 5,700,000
readers are without their papers; 350 blind news vendors have shuttered their stands; the city's
economic pulse has measurably slowed" ("Two Men," 1963, p. 42). Drawing from the publishers'
repeated pronouncements, Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News continually
pointed to estimations of the economic damage suffered by the newspapers and the New York economy
as a result of the strike and shutdown. The repeatedly inflated figures, alongside the continual
condemnation of Powers, also gave a scientific - and thus authoritative - tone to the stories.
U.S. News noted early on, "For most of the people left idle the strike was a financial
catastrophe," because while "[o]nly 3,000 printers struck . . . the number of people thrown out of
work totaled about 18,000. Lost wages approached 3 million dollars a week" ("How a Big City Lives,"
1962, p. 36).

In contrast, the magazines routinely disparaged the ITU's concerns regarding automation, its
non-monetary positions of a shorter work week and a uniform contract-expiration date. For example,
Time asserted, "And while Powers had insisted that his chief concern was not money but
three matters of 'principle,' he got all that he wanted on only one of those principles" ("Costly
Settlement," 1963, p. 67), an incorrect conclusion given that the union in fact succeeded on all
three measures. Characteristically, Time underlined the publishers' reservations:

The printers - and 17,000 other newspaper employees - have already lost 13 weeks' pay to win a
wage boost that is little more than what they could have got last December. "It will take them
years to make up their lost income," said one publisher. Added Director Walter Thayer of the
Herald Tribune [and Publishers Association President]: "This is not the kind of thing where
anybody wins." ("Costly Settlement," 1963, pp. 67-68)

In the last weeks of the standoff a barrage of monetary estimates appeared in the coverage
alongside reports of a devastated New York economy. Yet these were chiefly the concerns of the
publishers and advertisers. As such, they emphasized the publishers' line of how the event was
wasteful and pointless. The publishers' position was clearly rendered in responses to questions
Newsweek posed to Powers and Thayer. The latter argued,

At the end of eleven weeks of strike [sic] the total loss in advertising and
circulation revenues totals over $55 million of which $33 million would have been slated for
wages and benefits to 20,000 of our employes [sic] of our newspapers. The losses to businesses in
the city as a result of the strike are beyond any reasonable estimate." ("Post Time," 1963, p.
61)

Although many of these reports were unconfirmed and proven false months later, they gave the
immediate sense of condemning the typographers, especially for their supposed indifference, while
simultaneously discounting collective bargaining as a suitable means for settling worker-management
conflict. As a Time article, titled "At Last," noted,

Bert Powers' striking printers kept [the strike] going by thumbing down a package deal of
$12.63 a week. And why not? On the job, the top day [sic] scale was $141 per week; for
not working they were getting an average of $121 a week in strike benefits and unemployment
insurance (both tax free). ("At Last," 1963, p. 80)

Yet an independent report concluded that single printers received U.S.$68.40 from the strike
fund, while those with dependents were given $96.80, with both becoming eligible for state
compensation seven weeks into the strike ("Effects of the New," 1962). If so, the $121 figure was
dubious, likely combining strike pay and unemployment benefits workers received for only a brief
period. Time pointed to how the ITU had to threaten to take away strike benefits, at which
time "the contract was approved 2,562 to 1,763." A boxed piece directly below, "$200,000,000 Down
the Drain" (1963, p. 80), used figures provided by the two organizations allied against the
workers, the Publishers Association and one of the city's trade groups. The Publishers Association
totted up "known overall losses" of $178,900,000. New York's Commerce and Industry Association
countered with the whopping figure of $250 million and called it "conservative." As if determined
to have the last word, the publishers answered that "the financial setback sustained in the city as
a result of the strike is so staggering that it defies any reasonable estimate" ("$200,000,000 Down
the Drain," 1963, p. 80).

The piece went on to note how the strike affected the already impoverished: "At least 30 blind
dealers have been forced to go on relief. Other retail merchants can only guess what the strike
cost." Meanwhile, it repeated that the printers enjoyed "a combination of strike benefits and
unemployment insurance that averaged $121 a week" ("$200,000,000 Down the Drain," 1963, p. 80).

The alleged losses were elsewhere given considerable attention. "Though Manhattan's 16-week
newspaper strike cost it some $5,000,000 in pre-Christmas revenues," Time reported one
month after the strike ended, "the New York Times finished last year in the black, thus preserving
a record of annual profits that stretches unbroken back to 1896." Still, because the Times
did not put out "its 735,000-circulation New York edition" during the first quarter of 1963, "it
suffered a net loss of $4,136,000." ("Striking It Poor," 1963, p. 65). The piece continues,

"Additional revenue must be obtained," said Board Chairman Arthur Hays Sulzberger and
Publisher Orvil E. Dryfoos, "to make up for our losses." Which is no news to New Yorkers, who
have been paying twice as much (10¢) for the Times ever since its reappearance last month. Some
found the nickel boost too much to bear, and some discovered during the 114-day strike that they
could live without the Times. The result: circulation last month was down 6.7% from April 1962.
("Striking It Poor," 1963, p. 65)

In contrast to the newsweeklies' assessment, the unions labelled the settlement a success. The
ITU deemed the strike a "victory . . . containing all of the fundamental issues for which the
strike was called" ("New York Members," 1963, p. 123). Local 6 achieved each of its three demands:
1) A two-year contract and the right to forge contracts apart from a set pattern, 2) guarantees
that the union would not lose work to automation and would receive compensation, and 3) a reduction
in the work week to 35 hours for a day shift and to 33 and hours for night workers ("New York
Members," 1963, p. 123). In a similar tone, TheGuild Reporter pointed to how the
remarks of Theodore Kheel, the attorney aiding New York's mayor in negotiations, sharply contrasted
with those of the mainstream press:

His conclusion: The strike was not a national catastrophe, it does not signify the collapse of
collective bargaining, and no drastic remedies are called for. In short, in Mr. Kheel's
considered opinion, there is nothing wrong with collective bargaining in the newspaper industry
that more and better collective bargaining can't cure. ("Verdict on New York," 1963, p. 8)

The overstated claims in the aftermath of the strike were further disproved in a report carried
months later in the Times. While the newspapers had in fact lost considerable advertising
revenue, the collection of sales tax in New York City for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1963,
modestly exceeded the previous year. "The dire predictions about the strike's effect on business,"
New York's city treasurer remarked, "were not upheld at all. We didn't have a decrease in the
amount of business done" (quoted in "Newspaper Strike Changed Many Habits," 1963, p. 85). The
Columbia study found that newspaper readers had reacted to the strike and shutdown just as the
publishers had feared - by picking up newsmagazines and suburban papers or tuning in to broadcast
news. By the end of the year, the papers had lost about 400,000 of what circulation officials
deemed "marginal" readers, while recovering almost all advertising accounts. The Post,
however, because it resumed publication almost four weeks before the standoff ended, was perceived
by newspaper peers and advertising clients alike as undermining negotiations. The paper was thus
blacklisted by advertisers for at least one year (Powers, 2005).

Labour-management negotiations in New York's newspaper industry were again strained in 1965, and
a strike led by the Guild against the Times resulted in an almost month-long lockout
(Tracy, 2004). In 1966, the Herald Tribune, the World-Telegram and Sun, and the
Journal American ceased publication after a failed merger between the three. As might have
been expected, "The unions were identified as the culprits of the papers' demise" (Kheel, 2001, p.
42). Having some knowledge of the manoeuvring behind the merger, however, Theodore Kheel concluded
that "the real problem stemmed from the absence of sufficient market incentives to invest capital
to replace out-dated equipment" (2001, p. 42).

Conclusion

In many ways the newsmagazines' representation of the 1962-63 New York newspaper strike is
similar to that of any other industrial conflict. The union is systematically disparaged,
sufficient context and details of deliberations are absent or misrepresented, and the interests of
the industry owners are conflated with those of the public (Goldman & Rajagopal, 1991; Martin,
2004; Parenti, 1986; Puette, 1992). Overall, coverage of labour in mainstream outlets has
contributed to a broader cultural frame wherein the labour movement is routinely cast as
underhanded and corrupt.

Yet representations of newspaper strikes can be distinguished from the discourse about strikes
in other industries because they bring together dominant notions of how labour, social class,
institutional processes, and mass communication are represented and perceived at a particular
historical moment. As one observer explained during a crucial standoff years earlier between the
ITU and Chicago's newspapers, "In the total organized labor picture, the printers are a numerically
small group. They are important because they are an essential part of the process of public
information and discussion" (Champney, 1948, p. 22). In a similar vein, Raymond Williams (1980) has
pointed to the class distinction between newspaper owner and newsworker, which is rooted in a
belief that professes "a supposedly permanent division not only of labour but of human status
(those who have something to say and those who do not)" (p. 58). According to Williams, when press
workers whose labour power pervades the production of news "assert their presence as more than
instrumentality," they are condemned by the news franchise and, "within bourgeois ideology, as a
threat to 'freedom of the press'" (p. 58). Like the daily press, the newsweeklies acted to restrict
and discipline such power by framing the strike as an act carried out by one individual and "his"
union against the market economy and the public at large. In this regard, the magazines may have
had broader goals. One ITU official observed shortly after the settlement,

There has been evidence for some time that both Time and Newsweek have
mounted a crusade to manipulate public opinion toward a hatred of the labor movement and the
possible passage by Congress of additional anti-labor legislation. This was the method used to
pass both Taft-Hartley and Landrum-Griffin. (Cloud, 1963, p. 168)

Press coverage, then, doubtless figured alongside political design, the heightened automation of
printing processes, and the structural consolidation of the newspaper industry. Together these
would contribute to diminishing the stature of the ITU as a leading union in the newspaper
industry.

The 1962-63 strike remains an important chapter in the Typographical union's battle for
workplace autonomy and rights. The standard record of that struggle examined here suggests a
version that, in the long term, proved especially advantageous to the publishing industry.
Continued analysis of newspaper unions' struggles may likewise explain what was at least the
facilitative role news coverage played from the late 1940s onward, when legislative measures and
automation came together to broadly challenge the workplace autonomy and sheer legality of
newsworker organization throughout North America.